According to Leonardo, an artist’s ability to conjure up images in his imagination was vitally important. A vivid imagination combined with knowledge of nature would give an artist the “divine power” to fabricate his own universe and the ability to create “fictions that signify great things”.

In this early preparatory study for the Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo conjures up the chaos and terrifying violence of war. It calls to mind his advice to painters to improvise around “the invention made originally in your imagination”. At the top of this sheet, a concentrated implosion of action appears as a tangled knot comprised of figures and horses. Leonardo has not articulated every individual component, but has sought instead to express the narrative force of the composition as a whole. His expressive intentions have been perfectly combined with the motions of his hand to create a powerful evocation of the chaos of battle.

Below are a range of figures individually articulated, shown raising their weapons in dynamic poses. The economy of Leonardo’s technique illustrates his grasp of human anatomy and profound understanding of how the body moves.

In Leonardo's words
You must first represent the smoke from the artillery, mingled in the air with the dust stirred up by the movement of the horses and the combatants…The furthest amidst the swirling mass the combatants are, the less they will be visible and the less difference there will be in their lights and shadows.